This invention relates in general to the field of language education, and more specifically to a computer program for training a human""s language learning skills.
Decades of research in the fields of education and cognitive psychology have shown that the following skills are critical to learning to read proficiently:
Phonemic awareness
Letter-word correspondence skills
Fluent word recognition
Vocabulary
Comprehension skills
Appreciation of literature
Once students have developed good phonemic awareness skills, research strongly supports concurrent training of the other five reading skills (letter-word correspondences, word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension, and appreciation of literature) as the next step towards reading fluency. Students learn to read most proficiently and quickly when all these skills are taught at the same time rather than sequentially.
Phonemic awareness is part of a broader skill set called phonological awareness, which is the ability to recognize and use all sizes of sound units, such as words, syllables, and phonemes. An extremely successful set of programs have been developed by Scientific Learning Corporation. They are called Fast ForWord Language, Fast ForWord Middle and High School, and Fast ForWord Language to Reading, information for which may be found at www.scientificlearning.com. However, up to this time, there has not been a program that adequately teaches the other five skills mentioned above, once phonological awareness has been developed.
Neuroscientific research has also found that there is a potent combination of elements that lead to efficient learning of new tasks and concepts:
Frequency
Intensity
Cross-training
Adaptivity
Motivation and attention
What is needed is a program that incorporates the elements of frequency, intensity, cross-training, adaptivity, and motivation, while training students on foundational language skills such as letter-word correspondences, word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension, and appreciation of literature.
The present invention provides a method for cross-training a student in decoding, spelling, sentence comprehension and paragraph comprehension so that s/he may become a better reader, and a better learner. More specifically, the method utilizes a computing device to train a student in semantic, syntactic, phonological and morphological categories, with the method adaptively presenting the training in an entertaining way according to the skill level of the student.
In one aspect, the present invention provides a method on a computing device for training a student to decode words into a plurality of categories. The method includes the steps of: a) providing a plurality of categories, each having a plurality of words associated with them; b) providing on the computer, a graphical setting onto which two or more of the categories are presented; c) graphically presenting one of the plurality of words, from one of the two or more of the presented categories to the student; d) requiring the student to categorize the presented one of the plurality of words into one of the two or more of the presented categories, by indicating a selection of one of the two or more of the presented categories; e) recording whether the student correctly categorized the presented one of the plurality of words into its associated category; and f) repeating steps c) through e).
In another aspect, the present invention provides a method on a computing device for cross-training a student to categorize a plurality of words into a plurality of categories, each of the plurality of categories associated within one of a plurality of category types. The method includes: a) selecting a first one of the plurality of category types for training; b) presenting on the computing device two or more of the plurality of categories associated with the first one of the plurality of category types, as possible selections; c) presenting on the computing device one of the plurality of words for categorization into one of the presented plurality of categories; d) recording which of the presented plurality of categories has been selected by the student as a category for the presented one of the plurality of words; e) repeating steps b) through d); and f) after the student has correctly categorized a predetermined percentage of the plurality of words, selecting a second one of the plurality of category types for continued training.
In yet another aspect, the present invention provides a method on a computing device for training a student to categorize words into a plurality of categories, where the plurality of categories include a plurality of category types such as semantic, syntactic, phonological, and morphological. The method includes the steps of: a) presenting an animated scene representative of a sorting process; b) within the animated scene, presenting two or more of the plurality of categories as possible selections for sorting words therein; c) visually presenting the words to the student, for categorization/sorting into the presented two or more of the plurality of categories; and d) after the student has correctly categorized a predetermined percentage of the words for a first category type, changing the category type for training to a second category type and repeating steps b) through c).
Other features of the present invention will become apparent upon study of the remaining portions of the specification and drawings.